rland remember that the
Christianity they see around them is due to the zeal of a British
Mission. Yet there seems no solid reason for doubting that so it is.
Somewhere about the time of St. Patrick, two British priests, Beatus
and Justus, entered the district by the Brunig Pass, and set up their
first church at Einigen, near Thun. There Justus abode as the settled
Missioner of the neighbourhood, while Beatus made his home in the
ivy-clad cave above the lake which still bears his name,[426] sailing
up and down with the Gospel message, and evangelizing the valleys
and uplands now so familiar to his fellow-countrymen--Grindelwald,
Lauterbrunnen, Muerren, Kandersteg.

F. 3.--And while the light of the Gospel was thus spreading on every
side from our land, Britain was also becoming all too famous as the
nurse of error. The British Pelagius,[427] who erred concerning
the doctrine of free-will, grew to be a heresiarch of the first
order;[428] and his follower Fastidius, or Faustus, the saintly Abbot
of Lerins in the Hyeres, the friend of Sidonius Apollinaris,[429] was,
in his day, only less renowned. He asserted the materiality of the
soul. Both were able writers; and Pelagius was the first to adopt the
plan of promulgating his heresies not as his own, but as the tenets of
supposititious individuals of his acquaintance.

F. 4.--Pelagianism spread so widely in Britain that the Catholics
implored for aid from over-sea. St. Germanus of Auxerre, and St.
Lupus, Bishop of Troyes (whose sanctity had disarmed the ferocity even
of Attila), came[430] accordingly (in 429) and vindicated the faith in
a synod held at Verulam so successfully that the neighbouring shrine
of St. Alban was the scene of a special service of thanksgiving. In
a second Mission, fifteen years later, Germanus set the seal to his
work, stamping out throughout all the land both this new heresy and
such remains of heathenism as were still to be found in Southern
Britain. While thus engaged on the Border he found his work endangered
by a raiding host of Picts or Saxons, or both. The Saint, who had been
a military chieftain in his youth, promptly took the field at the head
of his flock, many of whom were but newly baptized. It was Easter Eve,
and he took advantage of the sacred ceremonies of that holy season,
which were then actually performed by night. From the New Fire, the
"Lumen Christi," was kindled a line of beacons along the Christian
lines, and when Germanus i